Socio-economic assessment of farmers' vulnerability as water users subject to global change stressors in the hard rock of Southern India. The SHIVA ANR project

Demand for vulnerability assessments is growing in policy-making circles, to support the choice of appropriate measures and policies to reduce the vulnerability of water users and resources. Through the SHIVA ANR project, we are seeking a method to assess and map the vulnerability of farmers in southern India to both climate and socioeconomic changes, and secondly, to assess the costs and benefits associated with trends in farmers' vulnerability in the medium and long term. The project is focusing on southern India's hard rock area, as in this geological context, both surface and ground water resources are naturally limited. We are also focusing on farming populations as these are the main water users in the area and rely exclusively on groundwater. The area covers southern India's semi-arid zone, where the rainfall gradient ranges from 600 mm to 1100 mm. Vulnerability is expected to vary according to local climatic conditions but also the socioeconomic characteristics of farming households. The SHIVA research team has been divided into six thematic groups in order to address the different scientific issues: downscaling the regional climate scenario, farm area projections, vulnerability assessments and quantification, vulnerability mapping, hydrological modelling and upscaling, and vulnerability impact assessments. Our approach is multidisciplinary to cater for the numerous inherent themes, and integrated to cater for vulnerability as a dynamic and multidimensional concept. The project's first results after 10 months of research are presented below.